The last decade (2000-2009) has seen many mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in numerous business sectors. While many M&As are not at the same monetary level as the top ten M&As, large amounts of shareholder's money are nevertheless at risk. Needless to say, some of the M&A's may be considered as unqualified successes while some have been dismal failures.
The business case for a merger or acquisition is typically predicated on cost savings based on the belief that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For example, operations of merged companies are often combined to obtain greater efficiencies in overall operations. However, the operations of component companies before a merger or acquisition are disparate so that integrating operations is difficult. For example, with multiple acquisitions made by a bank, the content (electronic documents) may reside in multiple repositories from several vendors that need to be migrated or integrated to/with the acquiring bank. Consequently, facilitating the integration of operations of merged and acquired companies is important to insure that a M&A is successful.